Suspended in Motion
by girlmonstering
Summary: "There's a moment, a split-second, right between jumping and the free-fall." This is what happens when you lose everything. When you cut your ties to friends, family, and the life you had before, what's left? A story from Julia's perspective.
1. Chapter 1

'Julia'

There's a moment, a split-second, right between jumping and the free-fall. You're not falling, but you've left solid ground. You have barely enough time to collect your thoughts as you hang there, waiting, wondering. It's almost like flying, but with the absolute certainty of a painful landing, and soon. You aren't falling yet, but you can't go back to solid ground. All there's left to do is hang there, suspended in motion, before the chaos begins.

'Julia, listen to me.'

I'd jumped, and flown. There's a sick kind of romance and beauty in self-destruction. That was... fun. Enjoyable, in a twisted sort of way. As long as I kept moving, kept trashing my life, I was fine. I stopped talking to my family, my friends. To people in general, unless they were useful in some way. Those could barely be called conversations though. Transactions would be a more accurate word. I stopped eating, stopped sleeping. Kept searching, and watched as my body turned into something strange and grotesquely beautiful.

'Julia? Will you please just pay attention to what I'm saying?'

There's some glory in self-destruction, sick as that may be. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. The awful thing is not self-destruction. What comes afterwards... that's the painful part. After that moment, suspended in motion, comes the landing. I'd landed. Hard. Crashed and burned. Once you're done breaking things, all you're left with is the pieces. It turns out that when you keep rejecting the people around you, they don't stick around. Push people away hard enough, they'll cut their losses and leave. I'd stopped eating and sleeping, and was left with nothing but a broken body. I'd betrayed it too many times over, and it was getting ready to leave as well.

'Julia!'

The harsh voice brought me out of my reverie. Where...

Dr. Roberts' face glared at me from across the desk.

'What?'

'I'd appreciate it if you made an effort to listen.'

Bitch.

'Sorry. I guess I got distracted.'

The sight of her glaring at me was by now a familiar one. White coat, white blouse, white hair, pale skin. She probably considered actual colours to be too frivolous, or dangerously indulgent.

'Well, I'd be grateful if you could at least attempt to be present for the rest of our appointment.'

She tsked at me and I imagined, not for the first time, raking my nails across her skin. Just to make her really notice me for once, instead of viewing me as yet another problem to be fixed, and to see the trails of crimson, bright against that snowy complexion.

She looked at me expectantly.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

'Yes, Dr Roberts.'

She sighed, and I wondered how she got her breath to smell so much like air-freshener. Plastic clothes, plastic hair, plastic skin, plastic body. All so perfect and so shiny, shiny, shiny.

'I've been speaking to the rest of your treatment team, and we all agree that you're not making as much progress as we'd like.'

I will not say anything to that.

'Recovery is a two-way process, Julia. You won't get better unless you make the effort. Dr Sicardi and I have been trying to help you, but we can't do the work for you.'

Is it worth pointing out that I have been trying? Not that she'll believe me. Here, in these white plasticised walls, trying is when you jump through all the hoops that they put in front of you. I haven't been 'trying' because I still don't turn up to meals, I still spend days at a time in bed, and I still move like I'm swimming through sand.

'There are people out there dying for a place in our facility. People who will be willing to work towards their own recoveries. Why should we wait for you to consider us worthy of your attention?'

Bitch.

I know she's just trying to provoke me into speaking, and a sharp retort is exactly what she wants, but-

'I didn't want to be here in the first place.'

She purses her lips. I recognize the shade of nude lipstick from the MAC counter my mother took me to, back when I still planned on going to prom.

'I know, Julia,'

She's speaking slowly now, like I'm a child who won't understand what she's saying,

'but your Mommy and Daddy were very worried about you. They agreed with the doctors that you needed some specialist help. That isn't an excuse for not trying, though. This is still a selective facility, with a track record to maintain. Recovery in three months or less. It's been two months, Julia. Soon we'll have to transfer you somewhere else, and it won't be as nice.'

I have been trying. I've been trying and she's been too blind and stupid and busy working on her perfect, plastic self to notice. Trying, when you live in a body and mind that is too tired and run down and broken to function, is just keeping going. Every day, every morning that I wake up more dead than alive, I open my eyes, anyway. Sometimes I stand up and walk to group therapy. Other days it's enough of a struggle just to resist the razors I have stashed in my shoes from when I was admitted.

Trying.

This morning, for yet another day, I woke up crying. Tears streamed down my face and I wondered if this was an outlet of grief or just involuntary, like drooling.


	2. Chapter 2

'Julia'

I suppress a sigh. Trying to get out of here. Just try, Julia. Fucking try.

'Yes, Dr. Roberts?'

'Your treatment team is worried about your lack of progress.'

'What?'

I swear to god, that woman is smirking. So, she finally provoked a response. I snapped, instead of giving her another verbal dose of the dreamy, sleepy stupor that I've been soaking in.

'We're worried about your lack of progress.'

I slow my words right down again, tugging myself back into the haze where I exist.

'I've been engaging. I talk to people.'

I've been trying, but it frightens me. When I go too far out into the world, I'm not safe anymore. My heart speeds up, drumming in my chest and my lungs fill with smoke. It's like every inch of my skin is crawling over me.

'Dr Emilia says you still haven't opened up in therapy.'

My skin crawls and opens up, and my head swirls. I can't handle it. Better to stay soft and hazy.

'I've been trying.'

Soft and pliant. Easy does it.

She sighs, a rush of sterile air floating across to me.

'I'm afraid you'll need to try harder. This is your last chance, Julia.'

'Meaning?'

I've lost my patience, lost my cool again. Damn it.

'Progress in the next week or we'll start looking at other options.'

She closes the file in front of her, and I stand up. That's my cue to leave. As I'm shuffling towards the door, keeping things slow and steady to avoid stirring anything up, her voice trails behind me with the strangest words I've ever heard her say.

'I'm glad to see you're getting your fight back. Embrace it. That's what's going to save you.'

The woman has no idea what she's talking about.


End file.
